


Come Back To You

by miikasaa



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Human Experimentation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 02:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4943764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miikasaa/pseuds/miikasaa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Officially, Eren Jaeger died undergoing emergency surgery two years ago. His death had been properly mourned, and his father's story had never been doubted, no one even thought that something sinister could have happened.</p>
<p>Unofficially, Eren Jaeger was learning to live again, stitching his family back together and trying to find a sense of normalcy while dealing with the effects of five years of experimentation, and the strange abilities he now possesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reborn

**Author's Note:**

> If you read my last one shot, Chances, you'll recognize that this is heavily based on one of the sections there. This isn't what I was supposed to be working on, but it was the first thing that I've had motivation for in a while. Additional tags will be added as things progress, and this is my first try at a multi-chap in quiet a while, so I hope you like it!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Officially, Eren Jaeger died undergoing emergency surgery two years ago. His death had been properly mourned, and his father's story had never been doubted, no one even thought that something sinister could have happened.
> 
> Unofficially, Eren Jaeger was learning to live again, stitching his family back together and trying to find a sense of normalcy while dealing with the effects of five years of experimentation, and the strange abilities he now possesses.

Eren Jaeger was dead.

At least, as far as the state of New York was concerned. According to city records, Eren Jaeger died on an operating table two years ago during an emergency surgery at the local hospital, under his own dad’s scalpel.

As far as anyone was concerned, he was dead. His father had even organized a vigil, even bought a plot next to Eren’s mom, had gone the whole nine yards to convince their old town of Eren’s death. He’d played the role of a grief-stricken husband and father well, had boarded up their old house and moved out of the suburbs, all without alerting any of the neighbors of his potential involvement in Eren’s disappearance.

In reality, he’d been held for five years in an old hospital in down south, where he’d been forced to undergo countless experimentations. In reality, Eren Jaeger was currently living less than six hours away from his old house, in Manhattan, with strangers he’d only just become accustomed to.

But if Eren were asked, he wouldn’t call it living at all.

Shortly after the retrieval, Eren had been moved to Erwin Smith’s penthouse. Only Erwin’s closest associates and Eren’s dad knew he was there, knew he was _alive._ At first, there had been an incredible bounty hanging over Eren’s head, and it had been decided very quickly that he would live anonymously with Erwin. Eren had been unconscious during the trip to the city, but he hadn’t protested the news. Erwin had the money, the connections, to keep one young boy hidden. Eren couldn’t go back with his dad- there was too much uncertainty in his father’s hospital.

After all, it was how Eren’s kidnappers had found him in the first place.

The retrieval had been six months ago.

At the very beginning, Eren was told to never leave the building. A part of him had wanted to disobey- he was strong enough to hurt anyone who tried to get close to him, but what exactly had been done to him was still uncertain, as he’d been too weak to undergo any tests at the hands of Erwin’s most trusted doctor and scientist, Hanji Zoe.

So he wasn’t allowed to leave. The room Erwin had given him was nice enough though, but there was only so much entertainment to be found in one room, and by month five, Eren had found himself looking forward to his daily walks with Hanji. His dad visited occasionally, but since their reunion, there wasn’t much to say.

His dad still had to keep up appearances.

By month six, Eren’s nightmares had begun to calm, and though there was still no telling what had been done to his blood, he was keeping down two meals a day, and was declared healthy enough to begin using the indoor gym and return to his studies.

One affect of the experimentation had been made abruptly clear the first day Eren had woken in the city, when he’d crushed the doorknob of his room within his grip, and then broken Erwin’s hand when he’d tried to help Eren stand.

At seventeen, Eren was strong enough to punch clean through the floor- something Erwin had not been pleased to find out about- and there was still so much left to learn.

* * *

Eren wakes up in a sweat- a cold, sticky sweat that suffocates the scream from his throat. He jerks up in bed, immediately kicking away his blankets and rolling himself onto the floor. He rests his clammy forehead on the wooden floor, breathing in slowly to control the erratic gasps he’d woken to. It wasn’t a nightmare, in fact he hadn’t dreamt of the hospital for almost a week now, this time it was simply a dream.

He’d been dreaming about his old life, about his old house and friends, about his childish dreams and annoyances at the adults in his life. Looking back on it now, it had all been so idyllic. The nice house, the perfect friends, the good grades in school and perfect doctor for a dad, his life had been everyone’s dream.

Or maybe it hadn’t been.

His memories leading up to and after his mom’s death were all still fuzzy.

Eren reaches to his bed, fumbling around until he touches one of his pillows, and pulling it over his head, Eren sighs against the floor. He didn’t feel the sun bleeding through the curtains, nor had his phone gone off, so it was still early. That wasn’t unusual; usually Eren’s night terrors woke him up long before the sun. The only unusual part about this morning was the dream, and the cold sweat. Eren’s body ran hotter than the normal human’s now, and normally he woke up soaked in warm sweat..

He laughs bitterly to the floor. Most teenagers took their dreams for granted, Eren had to record them all and repeat them to doctors.

Finally, after his sweat has cooled completely and made his entire body feel disgusting, Eren sits up to dig through his night table. He jots down what he can remember from the dream- a lot more than he’d expected, before he ducks into his bathroom for a shower.

He returns not twenty minutes later to find his bed made and two of Erwin’s associates in chairs in front of his window.

At first, their random appearances had freaked the fuck out of Eren- some barely unattainable memory of being cornered in the hospital- but as the months wore on, he became familiar with people barging into his room.

“Hey,” Eren greets, toweling at his wet hair.

Hanji, one of Erwin’s best scientists, crosses their legs and leans forward eagerly, clearly excited to ask why Eren was already awake, but Petra, one of the nurses at Eren’s dad’s hospital, places her hand on Hanji’s bicep with a shake of her head.

Eren frowns, a little affronted at the silence- It reminded him too much of more memories that haunted him. He chucks his towel toward his door, grabbing the first shirt he sees on the floor, and huffs a bit when neither guest speaks.

“Okay.” Eren finally says, when he’s seated on his bed and the silence has stretched far too long. “What gives?”

“First things first,” Hanji says hurriedly, as if they’d been waiting to say it for hours. “Dreams.” Eren tosses the journal to them, leaning back on his elbows as they read. Hanji had been curiously absent the last few mornings, so there was a lot to read through. Petra sat quietly, looking between the two of them until Hanji nodded and placed the notebook back on Eren’s table. “Good. Now, any physical manifestations since the last time we met?”

Eren shakes his head, water sprinkling onto his comforter and into his eyes. In addition to the superhuman strength, Eren’s hair and nails grew ridiculously fast, and Eren knew Hanji was worried this might lead to an enlargement of his limbs at some point. Which sounded ridiculous to Eren, but until he actually did Hanji’s tests, anything was possible.

“None that I could see. But,” Eren tucks his chin against his chest to glare at Hanji. “You’d know that if you hadn’t left me alone.”

Hanji’s face softens, and they laugh carefully, slapping a hand against Petra’s back. They at least look a little guilty, knowing exactly what Eren was referring to, but they were doing a poor job of hiding a smile, and Eren was already tired of whatever secret they were keeping.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Hanji says. “But I was busy finalizing a few things with Erwin-”

“Then why’s she here?” Eren interrupts, tilting his head in Petra’s direction. Petra was the only nurse allowed to perform standard checkups on Eren, the only person Erwin and Eren’s dad trusted enough. Eren liked Petra, but she seemed very out of place in Eren’s room with Hanji’s hand on her shoulder.

“Because-” Hanji suddenly pauses, glancing at Petra. “Why are you here today, Petra?”

Petra rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling good-naturedly. “Your father ordered another checkup, Eren. Says he wants to draw blood this time.”

Eren feels his blood go cold. They haven’t tested his blood, have no idea what the hell those doctors did to him in the hospital. He’d been promised at least another month or two before his blood came into play. Maybe he could convince his dad to wait a bit longer.

“I dunno,” Eren mutters, dropping his gaze.

“You can work through that later,” Hanji says, voice uncharacteristically quiet. “Eren. Your request has been approved.”

Eren’s head snaps up, a blistering hope winding its way through his veins. He’d asked about them the day he woke up in this penthouse, begged anyone near him to know if he could see them again. Now… could it really be happening now?

He swallows thickly, forcing himself to breathe normally for fear of this gift being stolen away. “You mean…?”

“Yes,” Hanji grins. “It’s time.”

Eren’s out of his room in record time, forgoing the elevator at the end of the hall to sprint down the stairs instead, and tries to remember if Erwin had mentioned any meetings or trips out of town within the last few days. When nothing comes to mind, Eren allows himself to pause on the third floor, allows his first real smile in months to grace his lips as he kicks at the door, shouting in exhilaration.

Luckily, no one sees him in the stairway, and no one’s really around as Eren tears across the floor to Erwin’s conference room, shoving the door open with mildly restrained strength, but he remembers not to let the door slam into the wall. He’s broken a few doors that way already.

Erwin visibly startles, looking away from the rest of the room to the door, but he relaxes again when he notices Eren in the doorway. Erwin folds his hands under his chin, his blue eyes twinkling as he leans back, a stark contrast to Eren’s nervous jittering.

“Is it true?” Eren asks, when Erwin makes no move to speak.

Erwin nods once.

Eren falls to his knees in the doorway, as if someone of his own strength had kicked him down. He’s breathless when he asks, “When do we leave?”

“You don’t,” Erwin says immediately. Eren moves to protest, but Erwin raises a hand to silence him. “I know you’re anxious, but we still don’t have a proper alias for you, nor do we have eyes on all of the doctors. It’s too dangerous to even think about letting you go.”

“Fine,” Eren crosses his arms childishly. “Then who’s going? You?”

“No. I’m sending my head of security.” Erwin gestures to the other end of the huge table, a table Eren’s never seen full and he’s beginning to doubt there’s even enough people involved in his life to round it out. At the other end another man sat, much shorter and a lot more terrifying than Erwin, his dark eyes boring into Eren’s. “Eren, meet Levi.” Levi nods, standing to walk around the table and join Erwin’s side.

Eren’s never even seen Levi around the penthouse, which either meant Levi was doing his job meticulously, or had been slacking. But Erwin didn’t hire slackers. “You’re leaving now?”

Erwin nods, but Levi speaks before anyone else. “I’ll get them here.”

“How?” Eren asks, a little skeptical.

“It’s a family reunion,” Levi’s voice was dull, almost bored. It surprises Eren, considering the gravity of his entire situation. “It won’t be difficult at all.” He leaves the room, leaving Eren to endure the waiting.

* * *

Eren had been told soon after Levi left that the trip shouldn’t take more than a day, he was only going to New York, after all, but that day turned into three, and then a week, without word of how much longer it would be. Even Erwin seemed to be on edge, tense and angry during any time spent with Eren, but he had no news to relay, no way to relieve any of the tension the penthouse seemed to have fallen under.

Eren’s days continue the same- wake up, tell his dreams to Hanji, walk aimlessly with them, train in the gym on the first floor, and try to keep two meals down properly. It was infuriating, being left in the dark while a stranger contacted ghosts from Eren’s past, but there was nothing Eren could do to speed up the process, and no matter how much he complained, no one had any information to pass onto him.

He takes his frustration out on the heavy bag, punching clean through three of them before Mike Zacharius tells him to run on the treadmill until they get more punching bags. Eren doesn’t stop running for almost three hours.

It’s on the eighth day, in the middle Eren’s walk with Hanji, that their phone rings. It’s the private phone they use, programmed with only a select few numbers, the ringtone bland and old, but it piques Eren’s interest nonetheless.

Hanji speaks quietly to whoever’s on the line, ignoring Eren bouncing on his heels in their peripherals to give their full attention to the call. Hanji nods, smiles for only an instant, and then pockets the phone.

“Well?” Eren asks, before Hanji can open their mouth.

“They’re in your room.”

Luckily, they’re on his floor, and it doesn’t take long for Eren to reach his room, but he stops abruptly at the door, his chest heaving and his limbs suddenly heavy.

It’s been more than five years… things had to have changed. The shock of his death might have just worn off, they could have moved on, found ways to live their lives. Could Eren really take that all away from them? Could he allow himself to be this selfish, to ask them to leave behind any lives they had to join or visit him here regularly? It had to be too much. Eren was dead to the world; he could be dead to them, too.

For a second, Eren considers turning away, considers telling Erwin to get them out, but his heart wins over his head, and his desire to see them again, to have them again, beats out every other thought he has.

Eren takes a deep breath, hyper-aware of the tension coiling through his limbs, of the unknown strength he had, of everything that he no longer knew, and pushes the door open.

It’s dim, his curtains pulled closed and only a few of his lights on, but he zeroes in on the two figures standing in front of his bed, of Levi’s lithe frame hunched behind one of Eren’s chair. Levi excuses himself quietly, slipping past Eren and letting the door fall shut, but Eren hardly notices.

His attention’s completely captured on his old friends, both taking hesitant steps toward him.

Armin reaches him first, placing a tentative hand on Eren’s forearm, and the fist Eren hadn’t known he was making relaxes. For a moment, they only stare at each other in rapt silence, Eren searching for any sign of the twelve year old he’d played with every day, and Armin looking for… well, Eren really had no idea. Armin looked so much older, his hair longer, his face missing most of the roundness Eren remembered, but his eyes, dream blue and wet with tears, were exactly the same.

Then, Armin was pulling him into an embrace, and Eren’s choking on a broken sob as his arms fall into place around Armin’s shoulders. Eren’s careful not to apply too much pressure, even as Armin squeezes as if Eren would disappear again if he held too loosely.

“They weren’t lying.” Armin murmurs as they pull back slightly, his voice thick with tears, his cheeks shining in the dim room. “They weren’t lying.”

Eren nods, unable to speak while Armin lets him go, (he tries not to let his spike of fear show on his face,) with an encouraging nod.

Mikasa looked almost the same, her hair cut at almost the same length as when they were kids, her eyes still dark and full of life. Her face had rounded a bit in age, and she was as tall as him where he’d been slightly shorter as a kid, but the blinding smile she breaks into is the same as back then. Her tears are much more obvious, trailing down her face and clinging onto her chin as she sniffles loudly, holding up a hand.

He takes it, linking their fingers together as neither of them moves. Until Mikasa breaks the silence with a desperate gasp and yanks on his hand to wrap her arms around his waist. She buries her face in her neck as she hugs him, as he wraps his own around her to pull her close. He’s mindful of his strength, of course, but in this moment, with Mikasa’s tears soaking his collar and his own dripping into her hair, Eren lets himself be weak, lets himself fall into Mikasa.

She takes his weight, takes his silent request, and they sink to their knees, interlocked still as Armin drops next to them, throws his arms around both of them. It takes only a few seconds to redo the embrace until all of their heads were touching.

“I can’t believe it,” Mikasa chokes out, muffled against Eren’s neck. Eren manages a quiet laugh, nodding against their foreheads. “I really… I really thought it was a lie.”

“No,” Eren chokes out, removing a hand from Armin’s hair to wipe messily at his eyes. “I’m here.”

“You’re here,” Armin repeats, whispering it again and again until it has no sound left to it, until it was well known to all three of them.

“How long?” Mikasa asks after a few more minutes, her voice considerably clearer.

“Six months.” Eren says, counting again in his head just to be sure.

“Six months?” Armin repeats, sounding incredulous. “Why are we just learning this now? Who else knows?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” a new voice says, and Eren whips out of his friend’s grips to face his door, where Hanji was leaning against the doorframe, and Erwin was standing with his arms held behind his back. Erwin speaks again, “Eren, I need your friends to come with me.”

“No.” Eren scrambles back, until he sits before Armin and Mikasa, their hands on his shoulders. He just got them back; there was no way in _hell_ he was leaving them again. “No- you can’t!”

Hanji raises their hands to placate him. “Relax. We just need to screen them.”

Eren shakes his head, tightening his grip on Mikasa’s knee. She shifts next to him, and he immediately lets go, thoughts drifting to just how little they knew about him. “I thought you were supposed to do that first.”

“They only landed an hour ago,” Hanji says, and in the corner of his eye Eren can see Armin nod in agreement. “You’ve waited long enough for this, Eren. We let it slide, but if we don’t screen them now, we’ll be forced to kick them out.”

“Okay.” He feels Mikasa and Armin tense up at his sides, and he nods carefully toward Armin. “But-”

“They’ll be back before dinner,” Erwin promises.

Hanji bounds into the room, grabbing Eren’s hand and hauling him to his feet before he can protest. “In the meantime.” Hanji leads him from the room, and he watches, walking backwards next to them, as Erwin takes Armin and Mikasa the opposite way, most likely to the basement. Mikasa glances over her shoulder, nodding once. “We have one thing to do.”

“Which is?” Eren asks, his shoulders slumping as they walk.

“Your father was adamant about drawing blood,” Hanji says quietly, and Eren resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Just a little bit, and then you’ll be back with your friends.”

Eren doesn’t say anything else on the way to Hanji’s small lab. He could still feel the warmth swimming in his chest at seeing Armin and Mikasa again, but he couldn’t shake the sharp anxiety that kept him silent at Hanji’s side. He was so, so different from before. And there was always the chance that Armin and Mikasa wouldn’t want to stay, that they wouldn’t pass Erwin’s test and not be allowed to see Eren again, and there was the chance that he could hurt them.

Eren couldn’t ask them to risk their lives just to stay at his side, but he needed them. He just hoped he could deal with whatever the hell was in his blood long enough to spend enough time at their sides.


	2. Storyteller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His memory was shaky, perhaps nonexistent. But for this one night, he could enjoy something close to the normalcy he'd experienced before the entire world shifted around him.

By the time Eren returns to his bedroom, his arm was aching and his nerves were on edge. Hanji had only taken a few vials of blood, but the thought of finally experimenting on his blood, of finally discovering whatever the hell had been injected into him, had Eren’s stomach twisting and his head beginning to throb.

He didn’t even know if Armin and Mikasa were still in the building, if they’d passed the screening to be allowed to spend time with Eren. Hanji hadn’t been able to tell him, either they hadn’t heard from Erwin or were too busy taking down Eren’s information to think of passing the news along.

But the sun had long since set, and Eren’s bones were heavy with exhaustion from the day and the emotional toll of seeing his friends again. And the thoughts, lingering in the back of his mind as Hanji stuck him with needles and asked the same routine questions, that he might lose them after today, weighed him down as well. Armin and Mikasa knew he was alive, though, knew where he was _living_ , there was no way in hell either of them would stay away.

This time, when Eren pauses at his door, it’s not because he’s afraid of what’s changed, of how different his best friends have become- how different _he’s_ become- it’s because he doesn’t know what’s to come. His friends could get kicked out, his abilities could develop rapidly, dangerously, and he’d hurt himself or someone in the building. His kidnappers could find him. His father could give up on him. Erwin could give up on him.

Really, the possibilities were endless.

So much could go wrong, he could lose everything he cared about again, but at this moment, Eren can hear muted whispers from his room, and he decides whatever the hell’s going to happen next, it’ll be much easier to face with Armin and Mikasa.

“Eren.”

Mikasa’s on her feet before Eren’s even opened the door all the way, jumping over the schoolbag Eren really only keeps for show, and tugging him fiercely into her arms. And even though he just saw her a few hours ago, the ache he’s felt, the phantom pain that he’s carried for the past five years, falls over him again, and he hugs her back just as tightly.

She whispers something to his neck, but he can’t quite catch it as he drops his forehead to her shoulder, remembering when they were little and carefree and Mikasa was tall enough to help lift him onto the monkey bars

Armin grasps his shoulder, offering Eren a careful smile. “Are you okay?”

Eren nods, a little disappointed when Mikasa lets go of him. Her touch is still as cold as he remembers it being, but with his new outrageous body heat, Eren had barely noticed the chill of her skin. “It was just routine stuff,” he says, not quite sure if they’d been in the room when Hanji mentioned his blood- or if he was ready to admit his apprehension toward the testing.

“You look pale,” Armin frowns, reaching the back of his hand toward Eren’s forehead, but Eren jerks away out of some unknown instinct, his chest constricting at the way Armin’s look of concern crumbles into something unreadable.

Eren knew Armin. Armin was _safe_. But there was something, something tugging at the back of Eren’s mind that said he wasn’t allowed to trust anyone.

“Hanji ordered food,” Mikasa says, after a few long, tense moments of silence. “Are you hungry?”

The thought of eating something made Eren’s stomach twist uncomfortably, but he allowed Mikasa to curl her fingers through his, to lead him further into his room and to his bed, where they all sit together, poking through various boxes of take-out. There’s a ridiculous amount of food, as always is the case when Hanji orders anything, as if they’re preparing several meals for Eren to eat over the course of the week. Eren never manages to eat everything they order, but that doesn’t change the number of cartons he finds on his desk, or the elaborate meals left on the tables in the kitchen.

Eren’s stabbing small pieces of chicken when the silence, left over from before, becomes too much for him. “So you passed?”

Mikasa nods, eyeing him as she chews. “Really, it wasn’t that complicated.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Armin shrugs, his tongue darting out to lick at a smear of sauce at the corner of his lips. “Confidentiality, and all that.”

“It was just questions,” Mikasa says. “Asking how we knew you, why we wanted to stay in your life, how we could contribute to your… _recovery_.” She falls silent, but Eren recognizes the look that clouds her eyes, realizes it’s the same look she’d always worn as a kid, when she was working through a problem in class or listening to one of Eren’s arguments. He can’t remember what the subjects were, or whom he was fighting with, but he could say, with utmost certainty, that the hardening steel of her eyes hadn’t changed over the years.

And somehow, that reassures him.

Mikasa continues after a second, her nose scrunching slightly. “Erwin just wanted to ensure that we wouldn’t ruin your life in anyway.”

Eren scoffs, using the action as an excuse to shove his untouched food into the center of his bed. “How could you ruin my life?”

“We could be enemies.” Mikasa says flatly.

“But we’re not,” Armin shoots her a pointed glare, as if he needed to prove that to Eren. “And really, Mikasa, we shouldn’t be talking about this.”

She uses her chopsticks to wave off his concerns. “They wouldn’t put a camera in Eren’s room, he needs a bit of privacy, right?”

“They thought about it,” Eren admits. He reaches for the small pile of fortune cookies, choosing to crush a cookie in the plastic wrapping rather than open it. He doesn’t read the fortunes anyway, and the cookies remind him too much of a blurry memory staged in his kitchen with someone he thought to be his mom, but Hanji always got so excited around them, so he didn’t mention it. “In the first month I was here, I couldn’t sleep through the night, and I broke a few lamps and nearly broke my wrist. Mike, one of Erwin’s coworkers in the FBI, suggested a camera so someone could monitor me at night. Hanji shot it down, though. Said my sobbing was loud enough so they didn’t need a camera.”

Silence falls over the room again, blanketing them in a cold sort nervous apprehension as Armin and Mikasa both avoid his eyes. Eren could hardly sleep through the night, could barely recall any definite moments of the last five years, and sometimes, he felt the need to mention that, as if saying it out loud, even at the expense of everyone around him, could help him come to terms with what happened.

Most of the time, though, he only succeeded in bringing down the mood of the room, and with the already somber topic, and the muted tension sprinkled throughout, he found it very difficult to look at either Mikasa or Armin.

Armin brushes his hair away from his face, dropping his empty container into the waste bin next to Eren’s bed. Mikasa doesn’t move, but looks away from Eren to glance at Armin across from her, and then nods silently. Sitting on his bed, staring at each other in the dim light bleeding through his blinds, they both look like complete strangers. Complete strangers Eren used to know so well.

Eren’s stomach sinks. Five years. Armin and Mikasa have five more years to their friendship than he has with either of them, so much time spent, so much time _lost_ \- “I-”

“You’re probably exhausted, right?” Armin interrupts him, smiling gently to let Eren know it was okay. “Mikasa and I should get to our rooms. We’re allowed to stay on this floor, in fact we’re right across from you-”

“Wait!” Eren cringes at the echo of his own outburst. Mikasa shifts, reaching a hand toward his shoulder, but drops it at the last second to let it fall just shy of his knee, and it’s then Eren realizes his shoulders are completely tense. He practices what Hanji told him to do, he closes his eyes and breathes deeply for a few seconds, then exhales for even longer. It doesn’t calm him down, not really, but at least he’s let go of the takeout container he was crushing in his grip. He tries again, “You’re… you’re staying? Both of you?”

Mikasa nods, her hair brushing against her collarbones in a way that fascinates Eren. The last time he saw her, her hair was so long, and almost always tied up in a ponytail or an intricate braid, courtesy of her mom, but now… well it was just another thing he would have to get used to. “Of course. We just got you back, there’s no way we’re losing you again.”

Eren makes a face at her word choice, but recovers quickly. “But what about school? It’s the middle of the semester-”

“Eren,” Armin says quietly, his smile faltering. “We graduated last month.”

“What the _fuck_.” Eren groans, flopping onto his back. God, he missed _everything._ The emotional strain of the day won, though, and he no longer had the energy to be pissed about the situation. He stares at the ceiling, and the giant fucking crack just above his head. “How the fuck… Then what about college? You’re applied already, right?”

Armin lies next to him, resting his head on Eren’s arm and it nearly makes Eren flinch. Erwin… Hanji… everyone here was always so careful around him, careful not to touch him or set him off, but Armin and Mikasa…

“It won’t be too difficult to apply somewhere close by,” Armin says, poking Eren lightly in the stomach. Mikasa moves closer to Eren’s other side, lacing her fingers with his. “Besides, we can always put it off for a semester or two.”

“But-”

“It’s only school,” Mikasa says. “It will still be there if we don’t go right away.”

“I guess so,” Eren mutters, his eyes falling shut at the unfamiliar familiarity of his only friends at his side. Their steady breathing, Armin’s hair splayed against Eren’s arm, Mikasa playing with his fingers… he could get used to this.

If he weren’t constantly worried he’d lose control of his strength and kill them, of course.

Eren’s throat stings when he tries to speak again. “So you’re… you’re both really staying?”

Mikasa answers with a quick swipe of her thumb across his cheek, catching his tears before they have a chance to slip from his face, and a long nod. Armin answers with a hard laugh and a pinch to Eren’s thigh.

The last time he saw them, Eren would have been embarrassed, furious even, at the tears burning his eyes, at the uneasiness of his gut, or the uncomfortable curl of his toes, he would have gotten pissed at himself for getting upset, and then taken it out on either of his friends. But now, well he’s cried enough in front of Hanji and Erwin, and Eren’s almost mad at his twelve year old self for wasting so much precious time fighting his classmates or bitching at his friends.

What he wouldn’t give to try those years again.

“Stay here,” Eren blurts, breaking the silence with an awful crack in his voice and his eyes screwed shut against the tears. “Please.”

Neither Armin or Mikasa protests his request, and they both lean away from him to kick off their shoes, and then Mikasa’s shuffling off his bed to make her way to the small, wooden dresser across from it. She looks through it for only a minute, holding up an old, way too small _Star Wars_ t-shirt that Eren and Mikasa had shared for almost an entire year when they were young.

He recognizes it as the shirt he was wearing the day he was kidnapped.

He doesn’t tell her that.

“You still have this?” Mikasa asks, smiling fondly as she tosses a pair of sweatpants to Armin.

Eren nods, swallowing several times to get rid of the lump nestled in his throat. “I think I was wearing it when Erwin found me,” Eren lies. He knew he had that shirt on the day he was kidnapped, but he couldn’t remember where it went afterwards, or how it had gotten to Erwin’s building with them.

Mikasa ducks into his closet to change, and after Armin changes he heaves a loud sigh, but he’s smiling when Eren turns to look. “I’m just,” Armin says, his bright blue eyes shining in a way that makes Eren’s head swim with nostalgia. “Very glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Eren says, rubbing his finger under his nose. “Yeah, me too.” He doesn’t mention that he really doesn’t know how “okay” he is. “Hey,” Eren suddenly says, as Mikasa re-joins them on the bed. “Did Erwin say anything about my…”

“Superhuman strength?” Mikasa finishes, her lips breaking into a smile at the way Eren’s head snaps to the side to meet her gaze. “Yes. Once we were… approved, I suppose, he explained a few things about you. Not everything, I’m sure.”

“Probably not,” Eren agrees.

“But enough for now,” Armin says, rolling onto his side. “Now go to bed, both of you. Mikasa and I have a lot to do tomorrow to move in here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eren laughs, tucking his arms behind his head. Mikasa settles at his side, close enough so he knows she won’t fall off the bed, but still far enough away that they don’t touch, similar to Armin. Whether subconsciously or not, they were giving him enough of his own space, and he appreciated it. He’s broken lamps and ripped up duvets, Eren doesn’t like to think of what he might do to them in his sleep.

He wants to draw them closer, to curl up in each of their embraces like they used to do as children, when spelling tests and colored maps were their only concerns, but they couldn’t go back to the past. And to Eren, after spending months alone in his room, just sharing space with Armin and Mikasa again was more than enough to put him at ease.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, Eren’s feelings of peace and ease had long since evaporated, as he hadn’t been able to fall asleep, and he couldn’t get comfortable. He’d been alone in his bed for too long and he’d forgotten what it was like to share covers with friends, to have the warm press of a body keeping him from moving about freely. That wasn’t all, of course, his thoughts and fears were also to blame, but it was easier to blame Armin’s hair tickling his chin than to worry about what dream his weary mind might cook up next.

Eren tries to move an arm, only to find it numb beneath Armin’s own two arms, and resists the urge to groan. Maybe he could wiggle his way out of this, get off the bed without waking either of them, and get to another of the empty rooms on the floor to try and get some sleep.

Eren’s just gotten his arm out from under Armin, when a nudge to his lower back makes him stop. Mikasa’s voice flutters through the still silence, and it sounds like she’s further away than he originally thought.

“You’re awake?”

He nods, before remembering she can’t see him, and resettles on the bed. “Yeah. But why are you?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Me, too.”

Mikasa doesn’t say anything for a long time, and he’s beginning to think she’s fallen asleep again until he feels the bed shift, and then Mikasa’s shoulder is pressed against his. “Eren, do you remember anything about that place? About the people that took you?”

“No,” Eren sighs, closing his eyes. It doesn’t do anything, his insides are just as dark as the rest of his world, but it creates the illusion that he’s blocking Mikasa out, and that he’s blocking out her questions. He’s used to them from Hanji, from Petra or Erwin or even Mike, but to go through it again, to explain it to someone who knew him before the kidnapping… somehow it felt different, almost burdensome. “Everything… it’s really just fuzzy.”

“Do you remember your tenth birthday party?” He can hear the smile in her voice, can almost picture the faraway look in her eyes, and he isn’t surprised to feel tears prick at his own eyes again. “You were angry about something, and beat that piñata so badly it wasn’t recognizable-”

“I don’t remember.” Eren interrupts stiffly. “Mikasa… I don’t remember that.” And it’s true. He tries to picture the day she’s describing, tries to picture being surrounded by his friends and family, of being so mad about some juvenile concern that he took it out on a party game, but all that comes to mind is faceless shapes. He can see a cake, a cake he knows to be decorated by his mom, but the rest was all a blur.

“I’m sorry.” Mikasa whispers, almost inaudibly. He feels her hand brush against his wrist, until she’s cupping both of her hands around his, holding them on his chest, just below his heart. “I shouldn’t have-”

“You didn’t know.” Eren says, his voice hoarse enough that he doesn’t have to worry about waking Armin. “Mikasa, I don’t- I remember the day I was taken, but that place just feels like a dream. And whatever they did to me to fuck up my memories, it was strong. Sometimes I can’t remember what my mom looked like.”

“That’s normal-”

“Then I guess the only normal thing about me is that I was too young when my mom died to remember her properly.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Mikasa snaps, and before a thick silence can settle over them, Mikasa breaks it with a quiet sigh. “You’re going to be okay, Eren.” He doesn’t miss how quickly she drops the topic of normalcy.

“I could crush your skull with one twist of my wrist.”

She squeezes his hand, and her voice is much stronger than his when she says, “But you won’t.”

Eren shakes his head, smiling bitterly. “And how can you be so sure?”

“I like to believe you’re still the Eren I knew, the one who tried to carry me across a muddy stream because he didn’t want to see my new superhero socks get ruined.” Mikasa says, knocking her head against his.

“I’m different now.”

“So am I.”

This time, Eren’s smile was genuine. “Good night, Mikasa.”

Mikasa doesn’t say anything in return, but by the time Eren feels himself nodding off, he realizes she hasn’t let go of his hand.

* * *

_“Jaeger.”_

_Eren looks up from his book, blinking slowly in the moonlight, and then again at the paperback in his hands. They weren’t allowed books, weren’t allowed toys or games outside of one designated room, but Eren couldn’t remember smuggling this book into his cell. He’s tried it before, but learned after the first time that it was just more trouble than it was worth._

_The voice, which Eren assumed was coming from right outside his door, didn’t speak again, so he figured they were gone. He turns back to his book and starts to think of a way to sneak it back into the free room, so as not to be accused of stealing it in the first place._

_“Dammit, Jaeger, get over here.”_

_Eren curses and tosses the book onto the floor, where it lands just beside his boots. He walks to his door, surprised to find that his leg is sore, and that he can’t put his full weight on his right foot._

_He’s only just gotten tall enough in the last year to see through the tiny window in the door, and as he glares out of it, he can immediately recognize whom it is._

_“What are you doing here?” Eren hisses. He clutches at the bars lining the door, trying to look both ways down the hallway for a guard or another kid, but she was alone. “How the hell did you get out?”_

_“Picked the lock,” she says, sounding almost bored about it, but her fierce gaze speaks of a whole other story. Her blue eyes burn him, and the empty look Eren had gotten used to over the years seemed to have disappeared. “I want out.”_

_“What the fuck are you talking about?” Eren tries his doorknob, but he isn’t surprised when it doesn’t move. He doesn’t know how she managed to pick her lock, or how she even managed to smuggle something into her room to do so without one of the cameras noticing, or why she’s at his door. “Why are you coming to me?”_

_“Because,” she huffs, rolling her eyes as if it should be obvious to him. She blows her bangs out of her eyes, and continues, “Your dad-”_

_“There she is!”_

_Her head whips to the side, and the burning gaze Eren saw a second ago is immediately replaced by a silent fear. Her hands drop to her sides, and through his window Eren can see that her hands were shaking, can see the color drain from her face as five guards surround her in the hallway, each one bearing a baton, and a gun strapped to their belts._

_“Hey!” Eren shouts, but none of the guards look at him. He tries to shake the bars, tries the doorknob again, but it’s no use. He can’t save her, can’t do anything but watch as one guard reaches for her arm and twists it behind her back. “Stop it!”_

_She doesn’t try to fight- whether out of resignation or fear Eren can’t tell- she doesn’t do anything as two more guards grab her other arm, and a fourth strikes one of her knees with their baton._

_She doesn’t make a sound, but Eren can hear the sickening crunch of her bones, and can see the way her expression twists in agony._

_The first guard presses a cloth to her mouth, and in seconds, she falls limply to the ground. The guard picks her up, holding her in his arms as if she were a ragdoll, as if she was worth absolutely nothing at all._

_“You didn’t have to do that!” Eren screams, but none of the guards spare him a glance. Her face was paler than usual, her lips still turned in discomfort, and he knew she was fucked for the next examination. His stomach clenches, and he can feel bile rising to his mouth._

_A new voice echoes through the hallway, from the opposite direction from which the guards came, a voice Eren recognizes in the deep recesses of his mind. It makes his nausea increase._

_“Bring her this way.” A man passes in front of Eren’s door, leading the guards away. He only passes in front of Eren’s door for a split second, and it isn’t enough time for Eren to try and see who it is. “Go to bed, Eren.”_

_Eren has no other option but to comply._


	3. Ache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've made it very clear that Eren can't remember anything of his kidnapped past, but Mikasa's beginning to believe that might all be a lie. But whether it's Eren orchestrating the lie, or the men who saved him, it's clear the illusion of secrecy could be the only thing truly keeping Eren safe.

As a little girl, Mikasa dreamed of being a gymnast.

She had made her plans at a very young age, had even gone so far as to look up the best gymnasiums and coaches in the country before approaching her parents about it. She’d dreamed of getting to the Olympics, of being strong enough to propel her body over vaults and fly high through the air. It had been a childish dream to fly, but she’d found the means to make it happen.

It was what had brought her to Shiganshina in the first place. The small town, hours away from where she’d previously lived, was home to one of the best gymnastics coaches in the country, who’d agreed to coach Mikasa a few weeks before her ninth birthday.

As a little girl, Mikasa never imagined abandoning her dream.

She’d done it once when, just shy of her first year as a rookie gymnast, her parents were killed in a break-in in their home. She stopped going to practices for almost two months, ignoring calls from distant relatives and her coach while she was relocated to a foster home towards the outskirts of Shiganshina. She stopped for two months before her coach showed up at her new home, and asked if she would continue.

Mikasa had refused initially, but a young boy playing in the yard next door overheard the conversation, and confronted her the next day. She had only spoken to this boy a handful of times, only knew him as the loud classmate who sat ahead of her in school, who fiercely defended his friend with the bad haircut, and yet he managed to get her story out of her. And that night, on the steps of her foster home, Mikasa spoke of her parents for the first time since their death.

And the boy, and Eren, got her to go back to the gymnasium.

Barely even knowing her, Eren had managed to get her life back on track. What kind of a friend would Mikasa be if she didn’t drop everything for him in return?

* * *

“What exactly are you asking me, Mikasa?”

Erwin sits behind his desk, comfortably leaning back in his chair, his posture meant to be reassuring, but Mikasa had been on edge since the moment Levi showed up at her front door and delivered the news that Eren was still alive.

Levi hadn’t even built up to it. He’d knocked, told her, and then asked if she was coming back with him.

There was a chair at Mikasa’s side, almost as grand as the one Erwin currently sat in, but she did not want to be sitting now. Not when she felt as if this reality, this beautiful dream of a reality, would shatter at any moment, and she would wake to find Eren had never been alive, or that he was being taken again. She couldn’t be caught unprepared.

Mikasa curls her hands into fists at her side. She’d told herself this morning, staring at the mirror in Eren’s tiny bathroom, that she would remain calm while she approached Erwin Smith. She could not let her emotions get the better of her.

“I want to protect Eren,” she says, keeping her voice as level as possible. She does not know Erwin’s story, doesn’t know how he’s been treating Eren, or why the hell he’s the one who led Eren’s retrieval and took her friend in.

Erwin leans forward now, his eyes narrowing only slightly, the tiniest change in expression, one Mikasa would not have noticed if she hadn’t spent the last five years looking for clues in the soft sighs of strangers, in the intensity of laughter, or the sharpening of a gaze. Erwin stares at her, no malice in his expression, and yet Mikasa feels her fight or flight instincts begin to kick in- and she doesn’t want to fight.

Erwin speaks, slowly, “we have some of the most highly-qualified agents stationed in this building. Why should I allow you to contribute, when I know these agents, and know what they’re capable of?”

Mikasa almost smiles. Now this is something she anticipated. “None of them know Eren like I do.”

“Do?”

Her smile disappears in a flash. “Did,” she corrects herself, managing to force the syllable through gritted teeth.

“It’s very expensive to train a new operative, miss Ackerman.”

“I’ve been in kickboxing for almost four years,” she admits, wondering if it would be enough. Mikasa knew, of course she did, that Erwin had some of the most skilled agents employed in order to keep Eren a safe secret, but she also knew that formalities and the impersonal nature of guards could very well be what gets Eren hurt again. “I know it’s not much, but I’m strong. It won’t be difficult to transfer that into becoming an officer.”

“I said nothing of being an officer.” Erwin holds his hand up before Mikasa can interrupt him with what she’d meant. “You’re willing to offer yourself completely to protecting Eren?”

She answers without hesitation, feeling herself begin to relax. “Yes.”

“And what if I refuse?”

Mikasa had been expecting this. “I know where this building is, and I know exactly who’s been keeping Eren alive these past few months. I can go public with this information. I’m sure the city would be interested in what its FBI Chief does in his spare time.”

“That would risk Eren’s safety.”

“You have the means to relocate him.”

Erwin’s expression breaks into a smile, almost as if he were proud of her answer. “Levi will train you.” He stands, his grin falling into a much smaller smile. Mikasa knew it was meant to reassure her, but a cold weight settled deep in her stomach, and for a brief moment she doubted that anyone in this building could keep Eren safe. Did Erwin even know the intentions of all of Eren’s saviors? “I’ll contact him, and he’ll begin training as soon as possible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a few meetings-”

The door to his office slams open, rattling the hinges and nearly displacing the tall coatrack just outside the radius of the door. Hanji stands just inside the doorframe, their glasses askew on their head and their expression bordering on frantic. “Erwin-”

“How many times have I asked you not to break my door, Hanji?” Erwin pinches the bridge of his nose. “If this one cracks, it’ll be the third this year.”

“Sorry boss,” Hanji grins, but only briefly. From behind them, Mikasa can hear an intercom relaying a message, but she couldn’t make out what the monotone voice was saying. “Oh, hello Mikasa. Anyway, I came here to ask, and actually it’s good you’re here Mikasa, since you may be able to answer. Have either of you seen Eren?”

Mikasa’s mouth goes dry. This was it; this was the moment that would confirm the ugly feeling in her gut. Someone had gotten Eren again, had stolen him from underneath Erwin’s nose, and really, how likely was it that they could find him a second time-?

“He’s not in the gardens?” Erwin asks, checking the time. He sounds far too calm, and it only adds to the stressful fire burning its way through Mikasa’s veins.

“Nope.” Hanji pops the “p” with a shake of their head. “Did you see him this morning, Mikasa?”

She swallows a few times, shaking her head before she can find her voice. “He was gone when Armin and I woke up. I thought he was with you.”

“Most of the time he is,” Hanji agrees. “But this building is old, with quite a few rooms, and Eren sometimes likes to disappear from the people he thinks want to test him. Well, let’s go find him.”

Mikasa follows them hurriedly from the room, Erwin slowly tagging along to meet them at the nearest elevator. “Eren does this a lot?” Mikasa asks, when the elevator doors have closed.

Hanji shakes their head. “When he first got here, he did. He hasn’t done it in at least a month, though.”

“Have you-?”

“I have a dozen guards searching for him,” Hanji assures her. It doesn’t make Mikasa feel any calmer, but it does help her to believe that they’ll find him sooner. Erwin pockets his phone as the elevator stops.

Armin stands just outside the elevator, his hands deep in his pockets and his lips pulled into a frown. “I didn’t even hear him leave the room this morning.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mikasa reassures him; after all she hadn’t heard him either. “We’ll-”

“Moblit’s already found him,” Armin interrupts her, glancing sharply at Hanji.

Hanji frowns, reaching into their pocket for their phone. “That’s strange. He should have called me-”

“There’s a problem.”

“Oh shit,” Hanji breathes. “It’s happening again.” Hanji grasps Armin’s hand, and together they sprint down the bare hallway, as they turn a corner, Miaksa realizes she doesn’t know which floor they’re on.

“Hanji!” Mikasa yells, tearing off after them. She catches up quickly, since after the initial turn the hallway was completely straight. “What’s happening again?”

Armin stops Hanji at a door towards the end of the hall Through the small window, Mikasa could see that the room was almost completely empty, save for a small dresser, a twin bed, and a few books on the floor. It looked like some kind of a cell. But it wasn’t the stark white walls or the pristine floor that caught her eye. No, what demanded her attention and froze her in place was Eren.

He was curled on the floor in the furthermost corner of the room, his hands clasped behind his head, and he alternated between writhing on his knees and rolling away from Moblit, Hanji’s right-hand man, who was standing in the middle of the room. Moblit raised an arm and Eren screamed, the blood-curdling sound echoing off the walls and jumping through the room, until it had filled every space possible, until her body could feel nothing but the reverberation of his voice, of his cry.

“What is he doing?” Mikasa demanded, screaming even though Eren’s had ceased.

“Eren…” Hanji shakes their head, their hand hovering over the doorknob. “I don’t know what it is about this room, I don’t even know why we _have_ this room- wait! Mikasa!”

Mikasa shoves past Hanji, throwing the door open. Moblit jumps at the sound of the door colliding with the wall, but not even his immediately action to block Eren from her view, or the way he reached for her wrist, could stop her.

Eren was on his knees again, his body bent over them as he clutches at his head, his face shoved into the ugly carpet. He wasn’t screaming anymore, but he was mumbling, a never-ending rush of words strung together. Mikasa couldn’t recognize any of them.

“Eren?” She passes Moblit slowly, dropping to her knees a few feet away from Eren. He freezes, his fingers tightening in his hair, and ever so slowly, he turns his face out of the carpet to face her. Her breath catches in a gasp- whether at the ferocity in his expression or the way his eyes were burning yellow, she didn’t know. “Ere-?”

“Mikasa!”

Eren lunges at her, a hand clasping around her throat as he shoves her onto the floor, landing above her and knocking the breath from her lungs. His fingers dig into her skin, her breathing already becoming shallow from the pressure. One of his knees drives into her stomach, nearly making her choke. Mikasa grasps at the hand pressuring her throat, but no matter how deeply she tries to dig her nails into his skin, he doesn’t let up, and his eyes, melting more into gold now, never leave hers.

“Eren,” she manages to gasp, coughing around the world. She can’t achieve another word, her head becoming lightheaded as well. Vaguely, she registers Hanji screaming something; she registers Armin and Moblit yanking at Eren’s arm.

Eren leans in close, until their noses brush and she can spot flecks of green in his eyes through her fading vision. He snarls, and if possible, his grip tightens. He spits one word.

“ _Ackerman_.”

“Eren!” That was Armin. Mikasa was almost certain of it. “Stop it! You’ll kill her!”

After the longest moment of Mikasa’s life, Eren lets go.

Instantly, Hanji and Moblit grab his arms, dragging Eren away from her to the other side of the room. Mikasa coughs, convulsing onto her side as the air rushes back into her lungs, and she fights to maintain control over her breathing. Armin drops to her side, gingerly running his hands over her hair. The room is silent save for her labored breathing and Eren’s frantic breathing across from her.

“What happened?”

They all glance to the door, where Erwin stood, his arms crossed and his expression perfectly composed. Mikasa chooses not to think much of it; she chooses instead to focus on the soft pads of Armin’s fingers as they trail along her hairline, on his careful breathing and eyes, trained on Erwin. She recognizes the look that flashes through his eyes as he watches Erwin, and makes a note to talk to him about it later.

“Eren began to lose control,” Hanji answers after a moment. From what Mikasa could see, Hanji was bent at Eren’s side, but he was curled in on himself again.

“Any injuries?”

Armin glances at Mikasa, and she knows he’s assessing her neck, where she can feel the marks from Eren’s fingernails burning her skin. To answer Erwin’s question, Armin shakes his head.

“Very well,” Erwin sighs, moving his gaze from Armin and Mikasa to Eren. “Eren. Let’s go.” Eren stands almost immediately, seemingly in pain by the way his body convulses as he moves, by the way he scratches at his arm, and then his shoulder. Eren keeps his head down as he walks, refuses to look at Mikasa or Armin. “Hanji.” Hanji follows Eren, their usual expression replaced by one as smooth as stone as they leave the room.

“You,” Mikasa whispers, when she’s sure her voice was okay. It takes a second for Moblit to realize she’s talking to him. “Did you people do that to him?”

“No.” Moblit sighs, moving to sit beside her and Armin. “Whoever took him, they fucked him up pretty badly. It seemed to be getting better over the past few months, or at least, Eren thought it was. He really can’t remember much of these outbursts.”

“You-”

“If you’re going to stay here, you’d best get over this divide you’ve created in your head, Mikasa.” He looks at her for the first time since Erwin had left, a fleeting glance that she can’t manage to read. “We’re all here for one purpose.”

“Sure.”

“Mikasa,” Armin murmurs, warning her quietly.

A sharp bell ringtone interrupts the following silence, and Mikasa lets out a groan. She can feel the beginning of a headache, and really fucking wants to take a nap, but she’s almost positive that Armin won’t let her sleep until he’s sure she’s okay.

“That was Erwin,” Moblit says, once he’s hung up his phone. “Your training begins now.”

“Training?” Armin asks.

Moblit stands. “Take the elevator to the basement, the practice gym will be easy to find from there.”

“Levi can wait,” Mikasa complains, slipping her fingers over the marks on her neck to rub at her face. “I need a nap.”

“No naps yet,” Armin tells her. From behind, Mikasa can hear the door open again as Moblit leaves, and Armin carefully readjusts himself so that he’s sitting behind her, her head resting in his lap. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“We’ll check the validity of that statement tomorrow morning,” Armin promises, and she can hear a smile in his voice. “What are you training for?”

“I want to protect Eren.”

His fingers briefly pause in her hair, and she hears him inhale sharply before he resumes. “Can’t you do that without becoming more lethal?”

“I need to be prepared for anything.” Mikasa sighs, and tries to tilt her head to look up at him, but finds it to be too heavy, and settles for closing her eyes instead. “Are we going to talk about what just happened?”

“No. Not until we’re with Eren.”

“Okay.”

“Which story do you want to hear?”

Mikasa smiles. “Surprise me.”

* * *

With a hard _thud_ , Mikasa lands on her ass on the training mat. Again. She groans in defeat, flopping onto her back and allowing her arms to cover her eyes. She was sweating everywhere, and muscles that hadn’t ached since she was a kid were flaring up again, burning whenever she even thought about moving. Which she wasn’t planning on doing for a very long time.

Her neck was still sore from Eren’s outburst two days ago, but apparently Levi hadn’t taken the attack as a legitimate reason to postpone her training. So she’d met him in the basement that same afternoon, and after falling asleep for several hours, Levi started to train her.

She hadn’t seen Eren since the incident, but neither had Armin or Moblit. Hanji told her it had been common, when Eren’s outbursts were incredibly frequent during his first month with Erwin, for him to disappear for a day or two inside the building in order to calm down. They also told her that Eren never really remembered what brought them on or what he did during the attacks, but his nightmares were always strangely absent for a few days afterwards.

“Get up,” Levi orders, leaning over her to swat her arms away from her face.

“No.” She tries to strike his arm, but he moves out of the way too quickly. Before moving to the city, Mikasa had never met anyone who could beat or even best her in speed and reflexes, and God, did some of her classmates try to.

“One hit and you’re down for the count?” Levi taunts. She can hear him step away from her, imagines his tiny frame circling her life a vulture. “How will you protect Eren’s precious life if you can’t even-”

In a flash, Mikasa bends her legs, braces an arm, and uses her strength to flip her way back into a standing position. She whirls, raising her arms to strike the first body part she can find, but Levi proves to be faster. He ducks her first attack, a wild swing of her arm, and grabs her wrist as she tries to pull it back. Levi sweeps his foot under her legs, and she falls again, but his hold on her arm doesn’t allow her to crumple completely.

Levi rolls his eyes. If she’s had no context, Mikasa would have thought him to be at the same maturity level as the boys she went to school with. She would have never guessed he was one of the best field agents Erwin Smith could employ.

“And that,” Levi says, tossing her arm away. “Is how Eren will get kidnapped again.”

She snarls, “Shut up.”

“We’re done for today. Be back here before dawn.”

Mikasa wants to say more, wants to challenge him again and again until she finally gets a win, until she can finally prove that she’s not weak, that she _can_ protect anyone. But she knows it will be fruitless. Levi isn’t like any of her previous coaches, she can’t get a rise out of him or annoy him until he gives in and skips a training day to teach her the move she wants. He’s cold and brash and well trained to stick to himself and his own plans.

In Shiganshina, she was the strongest person she knew. But here, she could barely be classified as average. Maybe. If her partner wasn’t some freak midget who looked like he benched twice his damn weight.

With another groan, Mikasa stands back up, immediately grimacing at the soreness in her leg. She never thought she’d think it, but Mikasa really missed the intense gymnastic sessions she’d had in her past. She was used to those routines, to those aches. This was all too foreign, too new, but she had to get better for Eren’s sake.

Unwrapping her hands, Mikasa seeks out the showers, intending to sleep her way through dinner and right to the next training session, when a call of her name makes her pause.

“Hey, Mik.”

Mikasa looks up to where the sound came from to see Eren sitting in the rafters. Swinging his legs and resting his chin on his folded arms, she can see a flash of the young boy she’d once climbed playgrounds with. Except that boy never tried to kill her with his bare hands.

She swallows hard at the sight of his small smile. “Mik?”

He frowns, and in the dim light of the basement she can just make out the scrunching of his features. “Didn’t I call you that when we were kids?”

Shaking her head, Mikasa tosses the tape into the nearby trashcan. She gulps down some of her water and grabs her sweatshirt, zipping it halfway before answering, “no.”

“Oh,” Eren says. His forehead crinkles again, and she can tell that he’s working through his thoughts. She wonders if that happens a lot, the false memories. “Well, I’m calling you that now.”

“Okay.” Mikasa smiles. She’s never been fond of nicknames, but she didn’t mind this one, not when it came from him. “How did you get up there, anyway?”

“Ladder.” He unfolds one arm to pint behind him, to a ladder attached to the wall that Mikasa had assumed was once a fire escape before the building grew too big and the health codes changed. “Levi refuses to train me and Erwin says I’m not ready to fight anyone, so I come down here to watch people train.”

Mikasa tosses her gym bag at the bottom of the ladder, popping her hood over her head before beginning her climb. “Hoping to pick up some moves?” She calls above her.

“I guess.” Eren says, and from the corner of her eye she can see him shrug. “It’s also a pretty good hiding spot from Hanji. They’ve got no fucking chill, let me tell you.” Mikasa laughs, but he doesn’t. “I think Levi knows I’m here, though.”

She reaches the rafter he’s seated on, and focuses on walking to him before she can answer. She has no idea how old these wooden beams were, and she’d rather not fall and break something. “What makes you say that?”

“He told me.”

Mikasa snorts, settling next to him. She mimics his position, arms folded on another beam, chin on her arms. She’d never been afraid of heights, had been too used to flipping through the air to pay any attention to fear.

“Mikasa… about the other day.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Mikasa assures him. “Armin and will talk about it with you later. And I know you can’t really remember them.”

“…Yeah.”

After a few moments of silence, she scoots a bit closer to Eren. It wasn’t particularly cold in the basement, but the extreme heat of his skin was welcome, even if it only made Mikasa more aware of how sweaty and disgusting she felt, and how desperately she needed a shower after training with Levi. Only a few days had passed since her conversation with Erwin, but she hadn’t seen much of Armin, any of Eren, during that time. It seemed her life, much like how her counselors in high school had warned her, really was changing. But Mikasa was sure no one could have pictured this for her future.

She wouldn’t trade it, though, not for anything in the world. She had Eren back, and she could do college later, the rest would fall into place eventually.

“Hey… Mik?”

Mikasa blinks, tilting her head to try and catch his eye. He wasn’t looking at her, but focused on something below them, his eyes squinted a bit as if to see or remember better. “Yes?”

“You- do you- you do gymnastics right?” Eren asks. “Or is that another thing I made up? Fuckin’ memories, I-”

“No, no, Eren.” Unsure of the drive, Mikasa unfolds her arms to cover his hand with hers. He stiffens, and she very distinctly feels his arm tense beneath her touch, but after a long moment, he relaxes some. “You’re correct. We met the day you convinced me not to give up the sport, remember?”

“No.”

The admission knocks her breath from her lungs, and she swallows thickly, glad that he wasn’t looking at her to see her reaction. “Oh.”

“You still do it, though, right?”

“No,” Mikasa says, barely managing the word. “I gave it up two years after you disappeared.”

He’s quiet for a few seconds. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“How can you be so sure?” Eren asks, bitterly. He flips his hand beneath hers so their palms align, and when he turns to face her, there’s a familiar spark in his green eyes that reminds her of the glares he used to give his adversaries on the playground before beginning a fight. It’s dim in the basement, especially above the lights, but she’s close enough to him that she can make out each little shift in his expression, the anger and disgust, the regret, and back to something akin to bitterness. “If I hadn’t disappeared, my dad would probably be alive still, you and Armin would be at the best colleges instead of an old office building, and you’d probably be winning the entire Olympics. But I had to go and screw it all up-”

“Eren, you can’t blame yourself for your own kidnapping.”

“But why me?”

As a child, Eren had been prone to angry outbursts, to yelling at anyone and everyone, and then immediately apologizing to those he knew hadn’t deserved his scorn. Mikasa had been used to this, so when he asks that question, when he asks it so quietly she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard correctly, it worried her more than any temper tantrum ever could.

“Eren-”

“Out of all the kids in this entire world,” his voice breaks, tearing her heart with it. “Why me?”

“I don’t know.”

“They had enough kids,” Eren mutters, continuing as if she hadn’t spoken. “They didn’t fucking need me there. No fucking requirements, no rhyme or reason to the tests, no specifications. Could have had any damn person in there, and it wouldn’t have made a difference-”

“Eren.”

He blinks, as if awoken from a dream. “Yeah?”

Mikasa turns to face him fully, folding a leg beneath her to maintain her balance on the beam. She also takes the opportunity to curl her fingers around Eren’s. “What did you just say?”

“When?”

“Just now. You said they had enough kids.” Mikasa prompts, watching his face carefully for every expression. On their first full day in the building, she and Armin had been warned not to prod into Eren’s memories, that it could trigger a violent outburst or long reclusion, but he looked stable to her. And really, shouldn’t they be jumping on any chance for more information into his past? “Who? Who had enough kids?”

Eren drops his gaze to his lap, his forehead scrunching in concentration. “I don’t… remember it all. But I specifically remember a girl. She was a small girl, even at our young age. And she was… always being monitored. During playtime, she would choose to be alone, but this one man, and sometimes a boy, would always approach her! And they called her-!”

A terrifying scream thunders through the room, breaking the calm that had settled over them and instead creating a fear in Mikasa that she hadn’t felt since the first moment she was told Eren was missing. It takes a second to register that it was Eren screaming, shrieking into the night like a demon, like the soulless creatures that were popular in movies, like the symbols of bad omens.

His head was down, his hands covering his ears as he screamed, showing no signs of stopping, but he was in pain. Eren’s nails were curling into his hair, digging into his cheeks, and she knew, she _knew_ , he was in agony.

Mikasa jerks back, searching her sweater pockets frantically, but she’d left her cellphone in her gym bag. She drops her hands to Eren’s jeans, blinking back tears as she feels for Eren’s own phone. When she finally finds it, he hasn’t stopped screaming, if anything his voice has raised in both volume and intensity, and she reaches for his wrist, holding tight in case he were to fall.

She dials the number faster than she’d ever thought possible.

“Hanji-”

_“Where are you?”_

“Basement-”

And then everything goes silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RIP any regular updating schedule I ever had. I'm pretty proud of the foreshadowing in this one, though. Anyone pick up on any??
> 
> Also! You may have noticed that I've gone back and titled the chapters, and added little chapter summaries. It's small, but I think it makes the fic feel more real to me. I hope you liked it!!


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